How to Use lip service in a Sentence

lip service

noun
  • So far all we've gotten from him is lip service.
  • She paid lip service to blue-collar workers, but she did nothing to help them.
  • To Diaz, the assistance looked more like lip service.
    — Miami Herald, 28 May 2026
  • Obviously a certain amount of that was lip service.
    — Rick Porter, HollywoodReporter, 13 Apr. 2026
  • No amount of lip service by the president will change that reality.
    — Dejanay Booth-Singleton, CBS News, 25 Feb. 2026
  • Consumers no longer tolerate lip service.
    — Michael Shribman, Forbes.com, 11 Aug. 2025
  • Lockwood’s nod to Wallace’s athleticism isn’t lip service, of course.
    — Steve Reaven, Chicago Tribune, 20 Apr. 2026
  • There is a greater good here that the people who make these decisions pay lip service to, but regularly ignore.
    — Fort Worth Star-Telegram, 28 Aug. 2025
  • Is this all lip service, or will those living near the buzz of an overactive data center actually see relief?
    — Rob Pegoraro, PC Magazine, 5 Mar. 2026
  • Boosting consumer spending and livelihoods gets little more than lip service in the communiqué that followed the plenum at which the five-year plan was mapped out.
    — Shaoyu Yuan, The Conversation, 5 Nov. 2025
  • But any practice having non-medical stakeholders can’t also care about patients and docs more than giving that concern lip service.
    — Torie Bosch, STAT, 20 June 2026
  • Germany’s next government certainly won’t be accused of lip service in Brussels.
    — Sudha David-Wilp, Foreign Affairs, 22 Jan. 2018
  • Some commanders paid lip service to the agreement, the soldiers said, while privately voicing desire for the war in Gaza to continue.
    — Sam Mednick, Los Angeles Times, 30 May 2026
  • In other words, political dinosaurs—or monsters—must at least give lip service to affordability.
    — Alissa Quart january 2, Literary Hub, 2 Jan. 2026
  • Conflicts escalate at a steady pace, so as not to scare anyone away from a comedy that pays lip service to real danger without ever considering a truly dark turn.
    — Ben Travers, IndieWire, 12 Mar. 2026
  • Skeptics warn that Putin is playing for time, for the opportunity to keep hammering Ukraine on the battlefield while giving lip service to seeking peace.
    — Susan Page, USA Today, 20 Aug. 2025
  • That, however, could merely be lip service talking around the inevitable reality that is Anunoby’s importance to the Knicks’ success on both ends of the floor.
    — Kristian Winfield, New York Daily News, 8 May 2026
  • The Smashing Machine particularly fails Dawn, whose frustrations get quite a bit of lip service but little depiction.
    — Bilge Ebiri, Vulture, 1 Sep. 2025
  • The sequel strips Grace of what made her special and merely pays lip service to the first one’s worldview, representing the antagonists as generically incompetent hedonists.
    — Michael Ordoña, San Francisco Chronicle, 18 Mar. 2026
  • The sequel strips Grace of what made her special and merely pays lip service to the first one’s worldview, representing the antagonists as generically incompetent hedonists.
    — Michael Ordoña, Houston Chronicle, 19 Mar. 2026
  • Harlem’s Fashion Row is doing revolutionary work within an industry that often has little to no regard for Black designers beyond lip service.
    — Robyn Mowatt, Essence, 12 Sep. 2025
  • This is not mere lip service; Spotify has moved from filling 20% of open jobs with internal talent to over 40% in 2025, with plans to increase this even more in the future.
    — Francesca Cassidy, Fortune, 8 June 2026
  • Even as the virtue-signaling Anthropic gobbled up more and more of its customers, OpenAI seemed to remain oddly resistant to paying even the slightest lip service to the greater good.
    — Julia Black, Vanity Fair, 7 Apr. 2026
  • This Women’s Equality Day let’s stop paying lip service to women’s equality and persevere together toward liberty and justice for all.
    — Laurie Gray, Chicago Tribune, 23 Aug. 2025
  • But patience can slip into complacency, and Xi’s reluctance to offer more than lip service and trade deals to allies may prove that China isn’t a suitable alternative to America’s global leadership.
    — Michael Schuman, The Atlantic, 16 Mar. 2026
  • Despite the administration’s lip service toward government efficiency, the policy change is threatening to be an administrative nightmare.
    — Neale Mahoney, Time, 28 Aug. 2025
  • It can be done only by creating a culture in which the best qualities of Christian humanism and the concept of the Imago Dei are not just given lip service but cultivated and celebrated, in churches and beyond churches.
    — Peter Wehner, The Atlantic, 10 June 2026
  • Internally at studios and agencies, there’s confusion — and frustration — around the opt-out mechanism, according to people familiar with the matter, all of whom noted there’s no formal system for doing so and characterized Altman’s walk back as lip service.
    — Winston Cho, HollywoodReporter, 15 Oct. 2025
  • Despite occasionally paying rhetorical lip service to accountability, the Sudanese authorities have never brought any Janjaweed commander to trial.
    — Alex De Waal, Foreign Affairs, 6 Nov. 2025
  • Continue reading … NATION ON EDGE — Stephen A Smith rips 'lip service' on civility after being at WHCA Dinner shooting.
    — FOXNews.com, 29 Apr. 2026

Some of these examples are programmatically compiled from various online sources to illustrate current usage of the word 'lip service.' Any opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback about these examples.

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